The World in Pursuit of Happiness

 

Research efforts focusing on the study of happiness in nations around the world have consistently discovered that Scandinavian countries (see map) and Denmark, in particular, have the happiest people on earth despite they live in relatively gloomy places with long cold winters. The interviews and findings seem to point to the “secret” ingredients of happiness (some of which are not surprising at all): high trust in institutions and others, living in homogeneous countries (low immigration), ability to have jobs that you are passionate about, being satisfied with life conditions and set low or reasonable expectations. This sounds fine until you look at world history and you realize that humans’ innovation and progress has been achieved mostly when people rise to new challenges often by setting high expectations and embracing the risk (anguish) of failure. In addition the cultural exchanges that comes from living in a heterogeneous country can cause serious social stress but the ability to draw upon a mixed pool of ideas and people is also invaluable to the process of human evolution. As a result, Americans (and other nations), who apparently are not the happiest bunch despite their relative wealth, should remember that while the pursuit of happiness can be at times painful in the end it can inspire to achieve the unthinkable and reward us in way that statisticians will never be able to measure.